Happy birthday to us!

On the weekend, Dig In turned 3 and we celebrated with the team and our awesome volunteers. We can’t believe how much Dig In has evolved into what it is today.

From humble beginnings in 2017, we served only a small number of people and made only a few meals. Family and friends would help us in our kitchens at home, cooking their specialty meals from scratch. However, it wasn’t long until word got around and our Dig In customers began to grow, meaning meals had to grow.

Thank-you FareShare for providing us with healthy ingredients.

This week we’d like to take the time to appreciate our team-mates, FareShare. Just like us, FareShare is a volunteer-powered charity with a simple mission of helping those in need. FareShare provides us with a range of foods and ingredients which we use to create all our delicious and healthy meals.

Expanding our services.

We are so excited to announce that as of last week, we have made a big step forward and opened a second meal service location at the West End community park.

Our COVID-19 snapshot!

When we started the Dig In charity, we never thought we would have to become UberEat drivers, but COVID-19 likes to shake things up! While everyone else was closing over the lock-down period, we made a promise not only to ourselves, but to the many homeless we serve every week, to remain operating. We were determined to continue serving as long as it was safe and legally possible.

‘We aim to not only fill stomachs but hearts too’.

As winter well and truly settles in, nights are growing colder and colder. For those fortunate enough to have a warm bed and blanket to call their own, it is hard to imagine just how dark and dreary these winter months would be for those on the streets. Unfortunately, this is the reality for close to 6000 homeless in Brisbane (as per the 2016 consensus).

Helping our health care heroes in an unprecedented time.

Last weekend we were incredibly fortunate to receive a range of meals from Fareshare including cheesecake, fruit salad, roast chicken, roast pork and vegetables. However, due to the nature of the current climate, numbers at Kemp Place and via our delivery service were low. We are conscious to continue communicating and raising awareness to those who we have previously served that we are still in action and serving more meals than ever. We hope that our flier run at different charities helps to achieve this.

Kindness takes many forms and sometimes, those with the least can give the most. Recently, we had finished serving and were packing up for the day. We had no meals left after serving a second helping to many. A lovely gentleman came up and was looking for a meal. We scrambled to find a spare meal but unfortunately none were left, and we felt terrible that we were unable to help this man.

There is nothing better than digging into a certain meal you haven’t had in ages.  One Saturday afternoon while we were serving our meals, we asked our customers what they haven’t eaten in a while and would like to have. The overwhelming response was a chilli con carne.

People choose to volunteer for a variety of reasons. For some, it offers the chance to give something back to the community or make a difference to the people around them. For others, it provides an opportunity to connect and feel part of a team.

Everyone has their own reason why they would like to volunteer. At Dig In: we are so grateful to all our volunteers. We try to make it as easy as possible to sign up and get involved. We understand some charities are overloaded with volunteers, that isn’t the case with us. If you wish to volunteer you’ll be cooking, preparing and serving meals within two weeks.